“We can do it,” he murmured, eyes on the other side. “One step at a time. We’re almost halfway.”
They hit the deep, quiet middle and, to their surprise, the water rose only a few inches up their torsos. Leo looked over at her in triumph. “See?” he said. “Almost there.”
She smiled, but a sharp sound ripped from her throat as her next step landed wrong, her foot sliding off the slippery edge of a jagged rock. Lily cried out, arms struggling to hold her bag overhead under the increasingly taxing weight. Leo looked over, eyes wide. “You good?”
A yes was on her lips, but then, suddenly, she wasn’t good. Her balance veered sidewise, and to compensate Lily did a quick sidestep, but all that did was bring her into a small eddy; she leaned to steady herself, tripping over an invisible obstacle. Her foot was swept out from under her, and she fell backward, submerging entirely for a shocking, gasping second.
The current twisted her torso, flipping her legs over and pulling her downriver, leaving her panicking, kicking for footing.
Lily came back up, coughing, blinking into the bright sun, desperate to get her bearings. The water was punishing and unsympathetic, rushing past her in a gleeful torrent. Suddenly her soaked pack was the least of her worries. When she’d lost her balance and slid downstream, her foot had slipped into a tangle of branches and rock… it was trapped. She had nothing to hold on to, nothing to reach for, stretch for, to pull her up. Leo took a few precarious steps toward her, reaching one arm out, but he couldn’t hold his pack steadily one-handed. Nearly dropping it, he immediately pulled his arm back, struggling to maintain his own balance. Both of them dropping their packs into the water would be catastrophic.
“Lily,” he said, voice steady. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“My foot is stuck.” She tried to keep the panic from her voice, but she felt it rising anyway, hot and bloating, pushing aside reason. When she jerked her leg back, attempting to pull free by sheer force, she discovered that it wasn’t only that she’d stepped into a tangle of branches. Something was hooked around her ankle, and she couldn’t twist her way out of it without losing her balance again. Lily could reach down and work it free, but she’d have to sacrifice her bag, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. “I can’t get free without dropping my pack into the water.”
He looked at her, and then over to the other bank, only about fifteen feet away. His dark eyes returned to her face, searching. The chaos of the morning had already delayed their start, and now the sun hung low, a lazy globe in the cloudy sky. Even if they sacrificed both bags and swam for the shore—even if by some miracle they made it out of the canyon before sunset—they would still have miles to walk in the dark, soaking wet, before they’d reach a phone.
“Are you stable there?” he asked.
“If I just stand still,” she said, teeth chattering, “I think so.”
“I’m going to get close enough to throw my pack on the shore, and then I’m coming back for you, okay?”
Lily nodded, holding on to his gaze like a tether. The water was pushing at her hips; fighting it with her body weight left her with the sensation that it was accelerating, that the river was trying to battle her. The outside of her bag was already drenched, but the possibility that something inside there could still be dry—the sat phone, the gun, my God, the journal—made her determined to hold it up, hands shaking as water dripped down her tired arms.
She needed him to hurry, but her heart twisted around itself at the idea of him rushing to get there and back, of him getting stuck, of both of them trapped and unable to even reach for each other. She was slapped with the frantic reminder she’d felt earlier: that if anything happened to him, she didn’t know what she would do. Lifting her chin, ignoring her thundering pulse, Lily urged him to get moving. “Be careful.”
“I will.” With one final glance over at her, he turned forward, one foot out, then another, faster now, taking risks he hadn’t before. A few times, his foot slipped, but he managed to catch his balance. Lily watched the tense muscles of his arms using the pack to balance his weight. She had a ball of lead in her throat. Leo stumbled, nearly pitching forward, and she cried out his name; panic felt like it was filling her, cold and terrified as her arms gave out and she had to rest the pack on top of her head so she wouldn’t drop it entirely.
Breathe in, breathe out.